WASHINGTON, April 8 (UPI) -- Pentagon officials expressed regret three journalists were killed by U.S. fire Tuesday in two separate incidents in Baghdad but declined to call it a mistake on the part of the military. They said news organizations were aware of the dangers when they sent correspondents to Baghdad.
"I personally have probably had 300 individual conversations with news organizations and bureau chiefs and some individual correspondents, and the essence of every one of those is war is a dangerous, dangerous business, and you're not safe when you're in a war zone," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said at a Pentagon news conference Tuesday.
Correspondents with al-Jazeera, with Reuters and with Spain's Tele 5 died in the attack on the hotel Tuesday.
Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Joint Staff vice director of operations, said the tank that fired on the building had been fired on first and was acting in self-defense.
"When they are fired at, they have not only the right to respond, they have the obligation to respond to protect the soldiers with them and to accomplish the mission at large," he said.
Two of the reporters were killed in the Palestine Hotel, a hotel known by the military and news organizations -- and to the Iraqi government -- to be a headquarters for many Western journalists covering the war.
At Central Command headquarters in Qatar, officials declined to discuss the specifics of the firefight that led to the deaths, saying details are still too sketchy.
"It's too early to be able to say exactly what happened at that site, and so I don't want to get into a who says what happened. We don't know enough to be able to say that definitely. And frankly, I don't know that anyone does have the whole picture," said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, a Central Command spokesman.
Brooks declined to second-guess the commander.
"Circumstances change in different places and the tactical decisions that are made can only be made by people on the ground," he said.
At the Pentagon, officers with ground combat and tank command experience leaped to the defense of the soldiers who carried out the mission.
"As a tank guy, there's no environment more dangerous than being in a city," one officer told United Press International.
A rocket-propelled grenade can injure or kill soldiers inside the heavily armored tank if it is placed correctly, officers said. The commander's first responsibility is to his troops.
The outcry from the press about the operation stems from two competing interests. First, reporters feel these deaths both keenly and personally -- mentally changing places with the reporters in the Palestine.
At the same time, however, the Pentagon has made no secret of its intent to cause as few civilian casualties as possible during the war and to err on the side of caution whenever practical. It frequently trumpets the restraint U.S. troops exercise on the battlefield and in the cities.
Those claims expose the military to critical questions about the operation, Army and Marine officers conceded. No matter what the answers, they insisted, it does not mean the commander was at fault. Except in rare cases of dereliction of duty, military officials defer to the tactical commander for "fog of war" battle decisions.
Brooks said the incident will be investigated.
"What we can be certain of, though, is this coalition does not target journalists ... And we will look into the circumstances that contributed to it. Where we have responsibility, we'll accept that responsibility," Brooks said.
Military officials said the investigation should look at a number of issues.
If the commander did not know there were journalists in the building, why didn't he? That would be a fairly serious intelligence failure, as the information was well known.
If the commander knew there were journalists there and ordered a return volley anyway, why did he?
Was the response proportionate to the threat posed from inside the hotel?
Did the commander have any other reasonable tactical options, for instance pulling back his forces or turning a corner, which would spare both the hotel and his troops?
If the commander knew civilians or journalists to be in the hotel, ought he have taken another route to avoid a potential shoot out or was there a critical military reason to be in that spot at that time?
The culpability for the deaths is not just the military's, the Pentagon officials said. There are questions that news media organizations must answer as well.
What were the reporters doing at that particular hotel in Baghdad in the first place? Were they invited or advised to be there by the Iraqi government?
If there was an Iraqi military presence in the building, were they aware of it or were they used as unwitting human shields?
Did they understand the risks of being in the Iraqi capital when they accepted the assignment?
Do they think their presence on the urban battlefield should garner more or less caution on the part of U.S. military commanders that that of an average Iraqi civilian?
Should this incident be investigated as a higher or lower priority for the military because of the involvement of journalists?
Do journalists or should journalists expect a measure of protection on the battlefield from both sides in a conflict?
